WAR LEVELS... REBOOTED

Is the institution of war levels really what has killed player vs player wars?

There weren't many player vs player wars for many months even before war levels were introduced. Personally I pretty much stopped warring because of a)rampant war protection, even on FB, and b) the threat of c3 retaliation. Then also c) loss of ability to sell captured population without draconian penalties. d) Lack of time factors in there, too.

Maybe the ressentiment that Scarlet describes elsewhere also contributes to a general lack of interest in player vs player wars.

What I'm asking is...are there any players who would be fighting other players, but are not, only because of problems with war levels?

Yes. Reality is that war levels really killed the war game.

If you want to go further back than that, you can look at the grouping together of better war players not for mutual defense, but mutual aggression. This has been a real problem behind the death of the war game.

The reason being a few 2,3 or more players in a small group knowledgeable enough, that they can declare war on 10, hell even 20 players in a large fed and dominate too few of them have any real war knowledge, or the few who know fail to share the knowledge. The small group of bandits then go on making excuses about being outnumbered in countries and assets which is total BS on their parts. And you know who you are.


To answer your question Jojo, yes, many people I would have declared are now at level 0,1, or 2 and I am sure the case remains the same with most people who would actively declare someone.

The lack of interest is knowing that 90% of players can declare knowing full well that they would never conquer a nation unless it includes gang style warfare and you can barely trust people in your own feds much less those outside of it. Space stations make this even worse.

Too much change has occurred to where it is difficult to pinpoint the biggest problem, and the picture becomes jumbled by a host of minor problems. The sum of which, have altogether destroyed or killed motivation to participate.

Now along comes maestro, and/or others with yet even more tweaks or changes when the problem is that the entire idea of war levels is crap and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that. The majority of long time players agree. Only crabs want to play under the new system. Honestly, I earn my protection for up to 8 countries on LU. Look at that I don't need to hide behind war levels. If I don't want to fight put up war protection.

No one needs war levels. The way it is setup is prone to manipulation and multiplaying. 1 to 3 players actually play active in a war. Then you have 5 or more active or inactive level 2 or under players giving loads of air defense. What part of that works? I can't even kill the source of that added air defense. Just a single example of how that system is up for manipulation and it should have been removed as soon as everyone objected. Mysteriously, the lead players who actively campaigned for these changes mysteriously and suddenly no longer have 'time' for the game. FN Bullshit.

now go ahead, keep talking.

Wendy

You can thank your buddy WB for War levels. He championed it last summer.

My tweak calls for total war for all players at war level 4. (Except for one secure main)

There should be no higher war levels.

Also, players at War level 0 thru 3 cannot be in a federation.

Seems reasonable.


Maestro

Question:

How many c3's can a player take before automatically graduating to war level 4?

My answer is 6.

you can take(as now) as many lvl 3 c3's as u like.

The old system where by u used war protection or learnt how to war, should be reintroduced.

the only change, if u pick peaceful mode ur exempt

To be honest, if they completely revoked all of the their so called "improvements" to the war engine, it would fix everything. Flat roll it back to the way it was (damnit, does anyone remember what the first sim year was?) in 2000 something. Everybody would be happy. Back then the war game was easy to understand and players could easily understand it. If you wanted to defend yourself: You could. If you wanted to war: you could. Of course the war game is a lot less fun when more people understand it. It get's a little more intense when you have a bunch of actives that know how to fight.

Now, it's so complicated that it's easier to just ignore it, and play econ. The econ game is complicated, so if the war side of things is more complicated you can forget it. Thus they had to add protection for the econ players, who couldn't understand how to defend themselves. It's been down hill since day one with this game.

They must be doing something right, though. Since we're all still *here*. I don't really fully understand that either to be honest.

War levels was introduced to encourage new players to learn to fight. The idea was that if you were able to take a lvl 6 or 7 C3, then you could fight a lvl 6 or 7 president.

It is false to blame WB for this.. notice his quote... "It's time to release the war level restrictions, too many problems were trying to be addressed with a single solution (protecting good/war players from newer/econ players and eliminating the issue of c3 warfare in particular). "

There were several issues that the GM's tried to fix with the war levels, and it has not worked, although those other problems still are/were problems. You cant dictate how the GM's fix a issue with the game, only suggest.

No Blame WB, and Zeba, but yeah mostly WB. No other single person was more responsible for influencing war levels regardless if W3c or WB admits this or not.

He is your friend so I get the defense but it is his fault. Just because he realizes his error doesn't excuse him from being responsible in the first place.

It would be really neat if they repeal it now just because "It's time to release the war level restrictions, too many problems were trying to be addressed with a single solution (protecting good/war players from newer/econ players and eliminating the issue of c3 warfare in particular). "

That would be super funny.

Blindness... simple blindness!!! sigh

lol

so, what is this i hear....wb proposes all these changes.......... where is wb now? LMAO

Frankly, the game was at its peak about 4 years ago. There was no nonsense, ppl warred with no whining, there was fun competition between federations, it was a game that was fun and enjoyable to play. GMs need to focus more attention on their rules and regulations versus making changes to a game that played fine before all these nonsense changes. GMs, bravo for creating a great game concept...... Boooooooooo for messing it up. You have lost many long term paying players over the last two years because of constant game changes. I know there have been Jozi chats, but I don't think GMs are really listening to the majority. I've read over and over various complaints, but I'm not seeing anything done to rectify these complaints. I see more and more paying people leaving. I take issue with having paid so much money over the years in building various empires, only to have things ruined due to constant changes, costing me more money. I see more and more of these "free" players playing but I see them being short termed. It's all a mess. Fix It!

WB was leading the charge for the war levels but he was not alone. A number of veterans joined in the discussion. I to joined late in the discussion last summer.

I believe the war levels if setup correctly will be a great plu$ for the game to attract/retaining new players. New blood i$ what this game need$, not a handful of veterans living in the past.

A top war level of 4 (See proposal above) along with cheap population sold by the GM will speed up/energize the game.

Wow, quit suckling the W3C ballsack.

Been reading some posts from the summer, where we were complaining about how the war game was dead (before war levels). I see how, amidst the many suggestions, c3 levels were proposed. Somehow that was turned into war levels. If I've got it right, that was to protect newbs and econ players from being preyed upon by warlords. That was successful, right?

So what happened to all the fighters? Is it that they went up to high war levels, 4 and higher, and there are too few players at those levels?

@ Wendy: agreed about how the concentration of warlords in one fed caused an imbalance of power. Is that still a problem? Aren't the players in levels 0, 1, and 2 the kinds of players who everyone agreed should be protected, and off limits to experienced fighters such as yourself? And aren't the level 2 players in a fed, providing air defense, as untouchable as if they were simply in WP--same problem as has existed for a long time prior to war levels?

@ Homerdome: How do you have fedmates who you can't defend? Can't you help them to reach your own war level? If they are inactive, can't you recruit new members to capture their stuff?

I do wish they had eliminated wp boosters on FB, as even Laguna had proposed, and which they had agreed to do. I also wish they had adopted the "50% of value out of WP to dec" rule which most were in favor of, and which they also had agreed to do.


The problem and solution to C3 Warriors

War

Quote: I also wish they had adopted the "50% of value out of WP to dec" rule which most were in favor of, and which they also had agreed to do.


Still love that idea Jojo. It still allows one to dec with C3's, which by the way, is a great part of war strategy, as long as they have other assets out of WP.

Seems simple enough

I retract "as even Laguna had proposed" from my previous post.

There should be a 100% rule for dec. War should be total. All or nothing...but for players at war level 4.

On all worlds, not just FB.

Unless you meant solution number 4, Why work to war?

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

In Simcountry, you can replicate a similar scenario as so: all main countries are forced into secured mode, the leader cannot be changed and all slave countries cannot buy population over 15mil. The rest would naturally follow.
Despite not being in line with several of the current existing features in the game, this would have served perfectly five, four years ago. The arguments against this option are all the changes that have occurred since October of 2006.<!-/Quote-!>

Then yes, part of the conditions to remove War Protection and Blackouts would be in place.

While still doing their part, War Protection, Blackouts and War Levels are mainly adding color to the margarine. And this one looks pink.

<!-Quote-!>Quote:

If you want to go further back than that, you can look at the grouping together of better war players not for mutual defense, but mutual aggression. This has been a real problem behind the death of the war game.

The reason being a few 2,3 or more players in a small group knowledgeable enough, that they can declare war on 10, hell even 20 players in a large fed and dominate too few of them have any real war knowledge, or the few who know fail to share the knowledge. The small group of bandits then go on making excuses about being outnumbered in countries and assets which is total BS on their parts. And you know who you are. <!-/Quote-!>

This isn't a flaw in the game. As such, it need not be corrected.

Um duhh Scarlet?

Did we need you to point out the obvious?

I know it was a people problem, not a game problem. Hence, the changes of Blackouts/War Levels were not needed.

Like you, it was just a case of hyper intelligence gone wrong.

I'll accept some of the blame for the war level issue, when W3C attached conditions to my c3 level proposal in an effort to address several issues with 1 system I didn't think it was ideal but did think that it would be effective. Part of the failing is in the system itself due to excessive restrictions but a larger part of the failing came from the failure to produce the war levels quickly enough and attach significant rewards to them. The death of the war game was inevitable either way, the only wars that were left were completely imbalanced (because few players took the time to learn) or were time wasting c3 wars. Neither of those options is appealing to many.

Overall, I actually think the game as a whole has benefited from a lack of war over the past several months. I see more and more forum posts from new players asking for help, looking for feds and showing a general interest. Which means there is a new crop of players coming into the game right now and they aren't being drowned out by those of us who power our way through everyone both in game and in the forums. If a new player comes to the forums for the first time and the first thread was some variant of 'World Wide War' or 'Stop the bitching' (which it generally was) and the entire thread was filled with posts of people berating, insulting and acting like power hungry idiots, it's not likely that the new player would be staying.

I have a few suggestions:
#1 A newbie forum. This forum would *hopefully* be the first place new players would go to post questions/look for answers and bored veterans will read/post it just like they read/post everything on the forums. BUT, this forum would be moderated strictly for sh*t talking, war pronouncements, etc., the kinds of things that newbies shouldn't have to sift through in order to get information/meet new people.

#2 Remove all war level restrictions, even level 3 or below. Leave the c3 levels in place and actually put rewards with them just like the rewards you get from leveling up and get the levels out there up to at least 20.

#3 To protect players who are new or who are econ only, just automate them into protection when they sign up. If/when they decide to become full players they have a button to push which makes them full players. To ensure that players don't use this to build up huge weapons stockpiles, they can only purchase defensive weapons up to 25T and offensive weapons up to 10T (enough to start a defense and to take out basic c3's). Once the player pushes the button they have a 21 day waiting period in which they can not be attacked and can start purchasing weapons without limit to be prepared to defend themselves, however in this period no military spending boosters can be purchased.

#4 War protection will only be necessary for players who have pushed the button to be full players and need protection while away so limit protection to a max of 1 month which must be earned, no more wp boosters.

Yes lets implement more of your already proven ideas for improving/protecting the game/players.

I'll pass.

Put the game the way it was. Play it as it was.

trying to tweek the war game just creates more unintended consequences than it solves. so, remove all war levels, blackouts, wp, etc. keep secure mode on all worlds except FB which is what it was two years ago.

move the war game back to where it was two years ago and let the chips fall where they may.